The Cradle and the Coffin, or First and Last, was formerly a sign in Norwich, and one can still be seen on the South Quay, Yarmouth. This combination may have its moral; not so the equally serious Mortal Man, in the little village of Troutbeck, near Ambleside, for there the denomination is simply borrowed from the beginning of the inscription which has nothing of the memento mori about it:—
“Thou mortal man that liv’st by bread,
What is it makes thy nose so red?”
“Thou silly elf with nose so pale,
It is with drinking Burkett’s ale.”
This imaginary dialogue is supposed to be held by the two figures on the signboard, the one a poor miserable-looking object, the other, who indulged in Burkett’s ale, the chubby picture of health, with a nose like that of Bardolph, “clothed in purple.” This sign was the work of Ibbetson; the picture is now gone, but the verses remain.[656]
At Hedenham, on the road between Norwich and Bungay, there is a sign called Tumble-down Dick, representing on one side Diogenes, on the other, a drunken man, with the following distich:
“Now Diogenes is dead and laid in his tomb,
Tumble-down Dick is come in his room.”
At Alton, in Hants, a drunken man is represented upsetting a table covered with cups and glasses. The verses underneath this picture are the same as at Hedenham, except that it is “Barnaby” who is said to be defunct, and not Diogenes. At Woodton in Norfolk, another sign with this name represents a jolly old farmer in a red coat, with bottle and glass in his hand, falling off his chair in a state of Bacchi plenus. The earliest mention we find of the sign is in the Original Weekly Journal for April 26—May 3, 1718, where a murder is reported to have been committed at the Tumbling-down Dick in Brentford. “Tumble-down Dick, in the borough of Southwark,” says the Adventurer, No. 9, 1752, “is a fine moral on the instability of greatness, and the consequences of ambition.” As such it was set up in derision of Richard Cromwell, the allusion to his fall from power, or “tumble down,” being very common in the satires published after the Restoration, and amongst others, Hudibras; thus, part iii., canto ii., 231:—
“Next him his son and heir apparent
Succeeded, though a lame viceregent,
Who first laid by the Parliament,
The only crutch on which he leant;
And then sunk underneath the state
That rode him above horseman’s weight.”
The same idea, and almost the identical words, occur again in his “Remains,” in the tale of the Cobbler and the Vicar of Bray:—
“What’s worse, old Noll is marching off,
And Dick, his heir apparent,
Succeeds him in the Government,
A very lame Vice-regent;
He’ll reign but little time, poor tool,
But sinks beneath the state,
That will not fail to ride the fool
‘Bove common horseman’s weight.”